Serbia wants to join Turkish Stream – foreign minister

Serbia is interested in joining the Turkish Stream gas pipeline project, as it wants to ensure energy security for its citizens and cut dependence on deliveries via Ukraine, said the Serbian Minister of Foreign Affairs Ivica Dacic.

"At present, we can express our readiness for participation
in this project because we need reliable gas supplies,"
Dacic said at a news conference in Belgrade after talks with
Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on Friday.

Serbia is concerned that everything can be done with regard to
the Nord Stream gas pipeline that runs under the Baltic Sea to
supply Russia gas directly to Germany and North Europe bypassing
transit states, but everything is forbidden with regard to the
gas project from the south, although they transit the same gas
from Russia, Dacic added. He called for the European Union to
support the Turkish Stream project from the very beginning
"grasp the essence of the problem from the very start."

In December 2014 Russia suspended
the South Stream project as the EU was blocking its
implementation. Instead, Gazprom and Turkey’s Botas Petroleum
Pipeline Corporation signed a memorandum to construct the Turkish
Stream pipeline through the Black Sea with the same capacity of
63 billion cubic meters. Turkish Stream will pump gas to a hub on
the Turkish-Greek border.

The EU could influence Bulgaria, which repeatedly spoke out
against
the implementation of South Stream, but not Serbia, said Dacic.
He explained his rather emotional assessment of the EU role in
the cancellation of the South Stream as he saw a threat to
Russian gas supplies through Ukraine next winter. He added that
Serbian authorities are obliged to ensure security of supply for
its citizens.

"We
wouldn’t like to find ourselves in a situation, in several years,
when we’ll have to look for those who are to blame for the fact
that winter has come and there are no more gas supplies via
Ukraine," he said recalling that Ukraine is the only country
through which Serbia receives Russian gas.

Turkish Stream will allow the strengthening of EU energy
security, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Friday
following talks with Dacic.

Turkish Stream will be 1,100 kilometers long and include four
pipes. The first one will replace transit from Ukraine to western
Turkey. The other three will replace Ukrainian transit to Central
and Southern Europe.

In April, Aleksandr Medvedev the Deputy Chairman of Gazprom said
that the fourth pipe of Turkish Stream will be finished by 2020.